Was Richard Nixon a quasi-socialist?

[A18]

Serious discussion.

[PBrunsel]

Price controlls, affirmmitive action, and several other Liberal ideas.

No, he was an Eisenhower Republican.

[A18]

So in other words, a quasi-socialist...

[PBrunsel]

So in other words, a quasi-socialist...

LOL!

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

No.

Richard Nixon was a damn good President.  It is a shame that a third-rate burglary turned his legacy sour.

[A18]

Name some good things he accomplished that aren't related to foreign policy.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Last time I checked, foreign policy was a major portion of the Presidency

Nixon wasn't wrong on affirmative action.  The programs just should have had a sunset date so that we would have had some sort of "equality target".  IMHO, he should have based the programs on economic disadvantage rather than race, though.

Nixon is generally credited for making government much more efficient, eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy and procedures.

Nixon was a stalwart of law and order in a time of extreme social upheaval.  He did his best to calm the nation and shepherd it through some of the toughest times in its short history.

Name some good things he accomplished that aren't related to foreign policy.

[Emsworth]

Price controlls, affirmmitive action, and several other Liberal ideas.

... including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Supplemental Security Income program, and food stamps.

[A18]

I find it somewhat amusing that Democrats were out to get Nixon. He was basically one of them.

[dazzleman]

I find it somewhat amusing that Democrats were out to get Nixon. He was basically one of them.

Some would say the same thing about Clinton and Republicans.

It's amazing how similar Clinton and Nixon were.  Clinton was basically the mirror image of Nixon - with a sunnier personality.  If Nixon had had Clinton's personality, he would have survived Watergate.

And no, I wouldn't call Nixon a socialist.  He was an opportunistic Republican who was neither conservative nor liberal in his policies, but who had a general conservative attitude.  It's the attitude that the Democrats hated, with a large degree of irrationality.

[A18]

I do, however, strongly support some of his policies, such as impoundment (brilliant!) and New Federalism (see my radical federalism topic for an even better solution).

[bgwah]

It's funny...I would've liked Nixon if it weren't for Watergate.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

It's funny...I would've liked Nixon if it weren't for Watergate.

He had South Vietnam walk out of the peace talks, preventing the war from ending right before the 1968 election.

[dazzleman]

It's funny...I would've liked Nixon if it weren't for Watergate.

He had South Vietnam walk out of the peace talks, preventing the war from ending right before the 1968 election.

You really believe the North Vietnamese were ready to end the war?  They used the peace talks to get LBJ to stop bombing them, but they had no intention of ending the war short of total conquest of the south.  Why should the South Vietnamese have stayed around for that?

And their manipulation of LBJ worked brilliantly, while LBJ's manipulation of the Vietnam situation and the bombing halt to try to throw the election to Humphrey nearly worked, but fell just short.  As it turns out, Nixon felt constrained by the bombing halt once in office, and it took the full-scale North Vietnamese conventional military invasion of the south in 1972 before he resumed bombing the north.

[MasterJedi]

No I don't feel he was.

[WilliamSeward]

No, Nixon did what was necessary for him then. He made some mistakes in his fiscal policies, but back then, there was such a sense among the economists that what he did was what he should have done, that we can't blame him for not seeing the problems it would lead to later.

Personally I like Nixon a lot. Yes, he was a cynical politician, but he did a lot of good things for this country.